China Taiwan's Wan Hai Lines surpassed Maersk Line as the world's most profitable container line in 2015, based on operating margins, reports Alphaliner.

The carrier earned $127 million before interest and tax, a 6.3 per cent margin on its $2 billion revenue, just ahead of the six per cent achieved by Maersk's $1.4 billion EBIT on revenue of $23.7 billion, the industry analyst said.

French carrier CMA CGM ranked third at 5.8 per cent followed by China Hong Kong's OOCL at five per cent, according to Alphaliner's survey of the 16 largest lines that have published full-year results for 2015.

These four carriers since 2010 have consistently posted core EBIT margins at around six per cent above the industry average.

The disparity in the scale of operations between Maersk and Wan Hai "suggests that size alone does not explain the outperformance of these carriers," Alphaliner said.

"At the other end of the spectrum, several Asian carriers have continued to post dismal results," Alphaliner said.

China Shipping was the worst performing line with a full-year loss of $335 million and a -6.5 per cent EBIT margin. Cosco, its merger partner, lost $227 million for a -3.2 per cent margin.

Mediterranean Shipping Co, the world's second-largest carrier by capacity after Maersk, is privately held and does not publish financial results.

Wan Hai remained the most profitable carrier in the quarter with a sharply reduced margin of 1.2 per cent, followed by CMA CGM at 0.6 per cent and Germany's Hapag-Lloyd at 0.1 per cent.

Maersk slipped to fifth, behind Israeli carrier Zim Integrated Shipping Services, with a negative margin of 2.3 per cent.

"While the fall in bunker prices initially boosted the carriers' financial performance, this effect was rapidly eroded when shipping lines forcibly passed all these cost savings on to shippers through lower freight rates."

Source: shippingazette.com